International, regional and internal players vying for
interests, wealth, power or influence are all beneficiaries of the "al-Qaeda
threat" in Iraq and in spite of their deadly and bloody competitions they agree
only on two denominators, namely that the presence of the U.S.-installed and
Iran--supported sectarian government in Baghdad and its sectarian al-Qaeda
antithesis are the necessary casus belli for their proxy wars, which are
tearing apart the social fabric of the Iraqi society, disintegrating the
national unity of Iraq and bleeding its population to the last Iraqi.

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The Iraqi people seem a passive player, paying in their
blood for all this Machiavellian dirty politics. The
war which the U.S. unleashed
by its invasion of Iraq
in 2003 undoubtedly continues and the bleeding of the Iraqi people continues as
well.

According to the UN Assistance Mission to Iraq, 34452
Iraqis were killed since 2008 and more than ten thousand were killed in 2013
during which suicide bombings more than tripled according to the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Brett McGurk's recent testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The AFP reported that more than
one thousand Iraqis were killed in last January. The UN refugee agency UNHCR, citing Iraqi government figures, says that more
than 140,000 Iraqis have already been displaced from Iraq's
western province
of Anbar.

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Both the United States
and Russia are now supplying
Iraq with multi--billion arms
sales to empower the sectarian government in Baghdad to defeat the sectarian "al-Qaeda
threat." They see a
casus belli in al--Qaeda to regain a lost ground in Iraq, the first to rebalance
its influence against Iran in a country where it had paid a heavy price in
human souls and taxpayer money only for Iran to reap the exploits of its invasion
of 2003 while the second could not close an opened Iraqi window of opportunity
to re-enter the country as an exporter of arms who used to be the major
supplier of weaponry to the Iraqi military before the U.S. invasion.

Regionally, Iraq's ambassador to Iran Muhammad Majid al-Sheikh announced earlier this month that
Baghdad has signed an agreement with Tehran "to purchase weapons and military
equipment;" Iraqi Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi signed a memorandum
of understanding to strengthen defense and security agreements with Iran last
September.

Meanwhile Syria,
which is totally preoccupied with fighting a three --year old wide spread
terrorist insurgency within its borders, could not but coordinate defense with
the Iraq
military against the common enemy of the "al-Qaeda threat" in both countries.

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Counterbalancing politically and militarily, Turkey and
the GCC countries led by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, in their anti-Iran proxy wars
in Iraq and Syria, are pouring billions of petrodollars to empower a sectarian
counterbalance by money, arms and political support, which end up empowering
al--Qaeda indirectly or its sectarian allies directly, thus perpetuating the war
and fueling the sectarian strife in Iraq, as a part of an unabated effort to
contain Iran's expanding regional sphere of influence.

Ironically, the Turkish member of the U.S.--led NATO as
well as the GCC Arab NATO non--member "partners" seem to stand on the opposite
side with their U.S. strategic ally in the Iraqi war in this tragic drama of Machiavellian
dirty politics.